Looking upgrade to SSD as well as run Raid 1 as well as having some 3tb drives in raid 1 for backed up storage and have questions!

Can you Put your os on an ssd with Raid 1 ( 2 drives in exact same state )? Would it slow the performance? Would it be noticeable? So in the event 1 drive failed it would keep running and i could just swap another ssd to replace the failed and it would copy?

Can you set 3 drives in there so in the event 1 fails it just picks the spare and copies to that and notifies you? Or something so you replace the drive again?

Can I put true crypt on this? Would it affect performance or anything?

What ssd's and hdds would you recommend? Intel 520 and WD Red? I was thinking 3x reds in 3 tb and 3 x 180 ssd or possibly larger?

Should I get a raid card? Or would on board be sufficient?

In the extreme event of hardware failures would i be able to put 1 drive with true crpte'd and read it on a diff machine to extract files...if i know the pw?

SSD is not a lot different then HDD for raid other then the TRIM as long as you are using INTEL you shouldn't have a problem , as for if you should use a RAID card again it depends on what motherboard you are using and how many drives and SATA ports your board has available . as far as I know you will not notice a difference in speed between a single drive and 2 drives in RAID .

Intel , Samsung , Crucial , plextor are all very good and reliable drives and yea WD red is a great choice for storage drives.

I had 2 128gb Samsung 830's in RAID 0 as my OS drive but reverted back to 1 256gb 830 because I have a AMD setup and can't use TRIM . I am no RAID GuRU but I do try and learn what I can , all of what you said seems very do able.

Can you Put your os on an ssd with Raid 1 ( 2 drives in exact same state )? Would it slow the performance? Would it be noticeable? So in the event 1 drive failed it would keep running and i could just swap another ssd to replace the failed and it would copy?

Typically RAID 1 increases read speed (on a good controller) and leaves write speed the same as a regular HD or SSD. If one drive fails it will notify you and it would reimage itself onto the new drive when installed and told to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dav3

Can you set 3 drives in there so in the event 1 fails it just picks the spare and copies to that and notifies you? Or something so you replace the drive again?

With an onboard ICH10R (Intel chipset on motherboard) this can be configured. The spare drive has to be "marked as spare" in Rapid Storage Technology toolbox. Dedicated RAID cards should be able to do that and more. Some people would just do RAID 5 instead, however.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dav3

What ssd's and hdds would you recommend? Intel 520 and WD Red? I was thinking 3x reds in 3 tb and 3 x 180 ssd or possibly larger?

If using the onboard Intel chipset then I'd definitely stay with Intel SSD's simply because they are supposed to be able to pass along TRIM commands to SSD's in RAID. Intel SSDs aren't a bad choice no matter what.

Again, for the intel based RAID you won't typically need the Reds either.... I'm using regular Seagate 500GB HDs and they work just fine.

from what I've read, Reds aren't worth their money if you're not using them in NAS units (or other similiarly confined storage racks). That doesn't mean that they're BAD, just that they're not a good value if you're not using them for that purpose.

Personally stay away from WD and RAID unless you do go RED. The blue and greens both spin down and do stupid power saving things that knock them out of an array. (yes there is a way to stop them from doing this, but its quite the hassle in my opinion) The RED does not do this, and does not get booted out of the array. I have been running Hitachi drives(part of WD now) and unless they have changed designs to be more like the WD line they don't break arrays with power features.

If you run a motherboard array don't go RAID 5 as onboard raid controllers, even the intel ones blow chunks when you start getting into real work like RAID 5. Stay RAID 1 for onboard with you hot spare idea, if you want get a dedicated RAID card with cache for RAID 5.

Personally if you have the budget for a dedicated RAID card I would go with the 5xx intel drives. I have found LSI and highpoint(cheap and almost as good in a desktop) to be decent cards. Adaptec makes good cards but you can run into issues and I would not advise an Adaptec card in a desktop right now just asking for trouble.